A disaggregated laser architecture enabling sub-nanosecond wavelength tuning time

Sophie Lange; Kai Shi; Raphael Behrendt; Daniel Cletheroe; Istvan Haller; Fotini Karinou; Krzysztof Jozwik; Benn Thomsen; Hugh Williams; Paolo Costa; Hitesh Ballani

doi:10.1117/12.2578497

5 March 2021 A disaggregated laser architecture enabling sub-nanosecond wavelength tuning time

Sophie Lange, Kai Shi, Raphael Behrendt, Daniel Cletheroe, Istvan Haller, Fotini Karinou, Krzysztof Jozwik, Benn Thomsen, Hugh Williams, Paolo Costa, Hitesh Ballani

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11711, Broadband Access Communication Technologies XV; 117110F (2021) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2578497
Event: SPIE OPTO, 2021, Online Only

Abstract

Optical switches represent an appealing option to address the upcoming scaling challenges facing electrical switches in data-center networks with the slowdown of Moore’s Law and the exponential increase in network demands posed by emerging cloud workloads. Wavelength switching based on tunable lasers and passive arrayed waveguide grating routers is a particularly promising technology for optical switching due to its amenability to fast switching and the passive nature of the core, which leads to lower power consumption and higher fault tolerance. We investigated the potential of this technology in the context of Sirius, a scalable, optically-switched network architecture for data centers, which can achieve ultra-fast switching time. At its core lies a novel tunable laser that can tune across wavelengths in less than 930 ps. The laser uses a disaggregated architecture where the carrier generation is separated from the wavelength tuning, which significantly reduces the wavelength tuning time compared to conventional tunable lasers. In this paper, we describe the different instantiations of this architecture that we developed and present the experimental evaluation.

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Sophie Lange, Kai Shi, Raphael Behrendt, Daniel Cletheroe, Istvan Haller, Fotini Karinou, Krzysztof Jozwik, Benn Thomsen, Hugh Williams, Paolo Costa, and Hitesh Ballani "A disaggregated laser architecture enabling sub-nanosecond wavelength tuning time", Proc. SPIE 11711, Broadband Access Communication Technologies XV, 117110F (5 March 2021); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2578497

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